FO Fridays – And There was Much Rejoicing!

This may be one of the most exciting creations I have had in a very long time.  It is downright remarkable and I am very, very excited.  (Admittedly I get excited when my husband makes me coffee or when pretty yarn gets put in my hands so I realize that I might be setting my ’causes of excitement bar’ pretty low, but I mean this is exciting.)

A few months ago my stash closet looked like this.

I was scared to go in here!

Finding anything was a nightmare and involved pulling stuff out and digging through all the stuff I did not pull out.  There were yarnalanches almost daily and it was bad enough that even a trained Sherpa may not have been able to find their way out of the seething black hole that my yarn closet had become.  Anything that went in there had a 50/50 chance of actually coming back out.  It was bad enough that looking at the yarn stash started to cause anxiety for me, and I knew that something had to be done.

Unfortunately, we all know in the real world there is a huge difference between what should be done and what gets done.  In my world you would be able to eat all the pizza you want without worrying about your waistline or cholesterol levels, I’d work three days a week and get paid for five because my boss would understand that the two extra knitting days a week are that important, I wouldn’t have to work out 4 days a week to still be able to wear a bikini nicely, there would be world peace, and my stash would be organized.  But the days went on and nothing really changed in the real world.  Pizza is still not all that good for you, the world is sadly not at peace, and my stash was still a mess.

And then one day, just over a week ago, the lights went out.  Or at least some of them.  You can read all about that little adventure here if you’d like. But to make a long story short we needed an electrician and he needed my fuse box which meant removing the yarn from the closet and moving it into the middle of the floor.

So for a few days my stash looked like this.

This made for an interesting few days and getting to the AC unit was a little perilous

And there it sat for a few days, taunting me and sometimes literally tripping us up.  And then the thought struck me.  I will never, ever, barring force majeure, have my stash all over the floor and have the time to organize it properly again.  So I’d better take advantage of it.  I told my husband I thought it would only take a few hours and he sort of chuckled at me and said maybe a few days.  I was convinced he was wrong so I opened up Rav got out my phone and set about organizing my stash both in the containers and on Ravelry.  Somewhere around hour five on day one I realized that my husband was right and this was not going to be quick and that I had done nothing else all day.  This is how it looked after day one.

I couldn't really see the difference at this point, but my Husband loudly exclaimed that it looked way better when he got home.

Sometime during day two I decided that I hated everything in my stash and that I hated knitting in general.  That’s when I walked away from the whole mess for a while before I did something rash like try to see how fast different fibres burn.  I have to admit that when I returned I could see a difference.

This is progress!

So with returned vigour I attacked day three of the organizing and this is what I produced!  It’s an organized stash closet with about %95 of my yarn in my Ravelry stash page.  I assure you that I am currently very sane.   (Check in with  me again closer to Christmas.  Sanity at that point is optional.)  But I did hear trumpets hailing my victory and I think that the skies opened up and light shone directly onto the organized stash just to further illuminate the gloriousness that my closet now contains.  Now I know where stuff is and my yarn does not leap out at my husband and myself as we walk past the closet on our way to the kitchen.  It’s really rather glorious and very exciting.

Packaging for bed sheets really does make great yarn storage. Give it a try if you haven't.

With any luck my next accomplishments will be world peace and waistline-friendly pizza.

For more great stuff check out Tami’s FO Friday, Creative Fridays, and Fibre Arts Friday.